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Carrion Luggage #1094921 added August 8, 2025 at 9:43am
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Hold Me
We are experiencing unusually high call volumes. Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line and someone will be with you shortly.
From Mental Floss:
An expert? I don't need an expert to know that the reason it's annoying is that it's playing while you're on hold. Hell, they could play Springsteen while I'm on hold and I'd still be annoyed.
We’ve all reluctantly dialed up business knowing that before we reach an actual person, we may be forced into the dreaded hold zone, the hum of annoying hold music flooding our ears as we ponder all the things we would rather be doing.
That's why I put my phone on speaker and leave it nearby while I play a video game on the laptop.
“Hold music is an audible representation of time that is being spent not being assisted,” Dr. Leigh VanHandel, Associate Professor of Music Theory and Music Cognition at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada, tells Mental Floss via email.
See? Like I said.
Incidentally, if your company is "experiencing unusually high call volumes" all the fucking time, they're not "unusually high call volumes;" you just don't want to pay for sufficient staff.
As much as it frustrates us, hold music may be a necessary evil. Imagine waiting on a call for any amount of time and having no music at all, just a sound void.
Could be worse. Could be constant commercials.
Later, companies realized that they could fill some of the customer hold time with branded announcements or advertisements...
Goddammitallsomuch.
“I don’t think there is a single genre that would make everyone’s wait time more pleasant,” VanHandel says. “Whatever genre [the businesses] pick, some people are going to love it and some people are going to hate it.” That might be the reason why companies choose hold music in generally inoffensive genres like classical, smooth jazz, contemporary, easy-listening music, and usually include instrumental pieces.
Ah, yes, mayonnaise music. Mayonnaise music offends me.
But one thing I haven't experienced yet, the one kind of hold music that would make me absolutely and immediately stop doing business with a company altogether, is winter holiday tunes. Unless the company in question had the balls to use the parody songs, in which case, I'd pay to be on hold. But none of them have the gonads.
“Companies should spend less time overthinking their hold music and more time hiring and training customer service representatives.”
Oh, look, another "expert" quote that I figured out first.
VanHendel also points out a new trend of companies taking a caller’s phone number and calling them back instead of having people wait on the line...
This is true, but I'd need something to ensure that the number they're calling back from doesn't set off my scam alarm.
Look, I know holds are going to happen. I try not to let them ruin my day. It's not often that I have to actually call in to somewhere, because I think I've figured out this newfangled internet thing, so it's not a daily annoyance.
Still, the music could definitely be improved. |
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